Duke 61, Butler 59

In one of the better NCAA championship games in recent memory, a memorable night of basketball lingered in the public consciousness because of all the things that almost happened at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.

Every defining sporting event – every competition that leaves an imprint on its audience – possesses a unique power found in a rare convergence of circumstances. Lots of games often involve the same patterns on a larger level, but there’s always a unique alchemy which sets one night apart from another. On this night in the heart of Hoosier country, the Butler Bulldogs weren’t the massive underdog Villanova was against Georgetown in 1985, the last time two private schools contested college basketball’s Division I national title. The fifth seed that fought its way to the Monday night spotlight was, however, playing for all mid-major programs, the Horizon League, and for the endurance of the idea that any team – no matter its resources or its brand name – can win collegiate sports’ most egalitarian and democratic championship, in an event where 65 teams are given the chance to compete for the brass ring.

With the NCAA Tournament very possibly expanding to 96 teams next season – that means the season which will start seven months from now – the chances of an unlikely champion or finalist will decrease due to the added strain involved in a seven-round tournament plus increased travel demands. If the have-nots in college basketball wanted to win a championship, they needed Butler to do so. Moreover, much of the nation – remembering the bad-boy identities of people named Christian Laettner and J.J. Redick – did not want to see the Duke Blue Devils lift a national title trophy for the fourth time in the storied and brilliant career of one Michael Krzyzewski. The buildup to tip-off created a singular mixture of forces which – after 40 minutes – left an unexpected but indelible impression on a national TV audience and a crowd of 70,930 spectators inside the squeaky new dome in Indiana’s capital city.

Simply put, this terrific tussle – which ultimately vaulted Coach K to an even higher place in the college basketball pantheon and propelled Duke to a fourth national championship – will be remembered more for what didn’t happen than anything which actually transpired. This game will be lovingly remembered by Blue Devil backers for the actual course of human events, but most observers will begin the college basketball offseason by talking about the “might-have-beens” that emerged on the special-order hardwood slab the NCAA installed for the 2010 Final Four.

Much of America will wonder what could have occurred on Monday if Butler’s Willie Veasley could have had a relatively normal shooting performance. The dependable defensive stalwart finished the season as a 48 percent field goal shooter and a 35 percent 3-point marksman, but on Monday – as was the case for most of this NCAA Tournament – the senior from Freeport, Ill., couldn’t hit the side of a barn. Veasley continued to get wide-open looks at the goal, but could manage nothing more than a 1 for 9 performance that deprived his team of the scoring punch it so desperately needed on a night when a seven-minute, 49-second field goal drought proved fatal for the Bulldogs.

From Feb. 4 through Feb. 11, Veasley hit over 50 percent of his field goals in a four-game span, but in March Madness, the big V couldn’t retain his shooting touch. Only once – in the West Regional semifinals against Syracuse – did Veasley hit more than three shots from the field (5 of 7). He hit only two attempts in the first round against UTEP, and only three (on 12 looks) in his team’s second-round near-loss against Murray State. Veasley hit only one shot in Butler’s West Regional final victory over Kansas State, and just two shots in Saturday’s national semifinal win over Michigan State. Veasley didn’t have to be spectacular, mind you; a 3 of 9 effort would have been good enough to give coach Brad Stevens an extra lift to that 63-point plateau, the very mark BU reached in its twin takedowns of Syracuse and K-State during a magical run through the Big Dance.

College hoop-heads will also wonder what might have been if the best NBA prospect on the floor – Gordon Hayward – had been able to shoot better than 2 of 11 from the floor. Hayward dominated Michigan State on Saturday in the semis, but on this night, he couldn’t get going, and more specifically, he couldn’t score in the final seconds when Duke clung to a tenuous 60-59 lead. Hayward, with the clock running inside 10 seconds, was funneled away from the rim by Duke’s Kyle Singler – by far the MVP of this game and of the whole Final Four at large. He chose to shoot a 13-foot fadeaway as he drifted out of bounds on the right baseline. The ball actually was straight on, but it hit the left side of the rim and bounced off. Duke’s Brian Zoubek corralled the rebound, and BU’s best chance for victory faded away.

But that didn’t mean BU’s last chance for victory had come and gone. Hayward unexpectedly gained one more chance to rock the college basketball world and create the memory of a lifetime.

This is when an event which almost happened truly colored the collective remembrance of an epic basketball battle between two untiring and unselfish teams.

After Zoubek split a pair of free throws to give Duke a two-point lead – he intentionally missed the second one, given Butler’s lack of timeouts – Hayward furiously dribbled up the right sideline in his backcourt before releasing a heave from the midcourt stripe. Many working journalists on press row felt the shot was going to stay to the right, but the ball seemed to tail back to the left at the very end, putting it near the small white square on the backboard where coaches tell players to kiss angled bank shot attempts. Ultimately, Hayward’s heaven-ward prayer of a propulsion slammed off the window and hit the front of the rim before bouncing out at an angle. If the shot had been located three inches to the left and three inches lower, it would have tickled the twine. Ah, but that’s why a halfcourt shot is what it is: a low-percentage play that has to be perfect. It wasn’t, and while most of the Lucas Oil Stadium crowd – plus Butler fans who watched on a big screen at nearby Hinkle Fieldhouse – assumed the hands-over-heads posture of shock and stunned amazement, the folks in Durham, N.C., rejoiced in the triumph of Duke’s least likely national championship in the Krzyzewski era.

Coach K and Company lurked under the radar for much of the season and were not listed as anyone’s pick to play for the national title, much less win it. Most hoops pundits had Kentucky knocking down Duke in the national semifinals, and if anyone did have the Blue Devils in the final throwdown on Selection Sunday, they almost surely had Kansas or Syracuse defeating the ACC champions for the whole ball of wax.

Kentucky, Kansas and Syracuse, however, failed to uphold their respective No. 1 regional seeds. Duke held up its part of the bargain in a wide-open South Region, and after demolishing West Virginia in the national semifinals, the Blue Devils simply needed to grind out a win against Butler’s fearless defense in order to win title number four for Coach K. Duke – up by five inside the two-minute mark of regulation – did in fact wobble, as Nolan Smith missed an easy layup and Singler – who finished with 19 points in a 40-minute iron-man performance – barely nicked the rim on a wide-open 14-foot jumper. Those misfires gave Butler a chance to win, but only a chance. The brave Bulldogs had not allowed an opponent to score 60 points in the first five games of the 2010 NCAA Tournament. It turns out that Duke’s 61 was just enough to turn back America’s newfound darling, the team that almost won with a shot Joe Posnanski of the Kansas City Star called “the almost-greatest ending in the history of basketball.”

Make no mistake: It was.

Sadly for Butler, “almost-greatest” doesn’t count.

Hail the Duke Blue Devils and their coach, who joins Adolph Rupp as one of only two men to win four national championships, with John Wooden owning 10. Mike Krzyzewski has taken his place as the second-greatest coach in college basketball history, on a night when his team – for the first time in nine years – became number one at the end of the NCAA Tournament.

By: Matt Zemek
DFN Sports Senior Staff Writer